RISE STATEMENT ON SCHOOL MEALS

Glasgow City Council last week implemented a shocking 100% price rise for use of their school breakfast club facilities, increasing the price from £1 per day to £2. This is yet another move which is certain to hit working class families hard, especially those whose wage lifts them just out of the bracket for free school meal entitlement.

Breakfast clubs are an essential service for the modern workforce, allowing parents to drop their children off for school at 8am, all the while knowing they will be safe and will receive a decent breakfast to start the day.

To increase the cost of this by 100% is potentially devastating for the thousands of families across the city who rely on this service, and who have already been hit hard by years of austerity.

RISE stands firm behind the belief that school meals are a right, not a privilege, and that access to them should be universally accessible to all. It is outrageous that Glasgow City Council continues to deem it appropriate to pass the burden of austerity to working class families, as part of a budget which sees £130 million cut from public service funds.

So much of the education debate in Scotland focuses on short-sighted and misguided ideas around reducing educational inequality. That's why cuts to breakfast clubs - which help to mitigate the impact of poverty upon young people - are so utterly shameful.

At a time of increasing austerity which has put incredible pressure on working people all over Glasgow, a Labour-run council elects to punish them even more. Labour have brazenly claimed to be the real voice of the Scottish Left - the actions of Glasgow City Council show us just how hollow that claim really is.